


Something Blue

by persnickett



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: sexy_right, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Lookit that. The vote went through, for the new marriage law.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Blue

**Author's Note:**

> An actual fic this time. :)   
> Written for sexy_right 's Put a Ring on It challenge. The challenge is to create fic or art that relates to the theme of marriage or weddings.

  
“Huh.”

John folded up his copy of _The_ _Times_ and set it down, but that just brought him back to the front page again. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at the picture; [Cuomo in his office](http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/06/25/nyregion/20110625_MARRIAGE.html), surrounded by Armani and signing his life away on a desk covered in neat little line-ups of ballpoint pens. Apparently a pack of fancy Suits like that couldn’t share a pen. Your tax dollars, hard at work.

“Huh?” Matt responded, just as eloquently.

“Lookit that. The vote went through, for the new marriage law.” John thought it came out casual enough.

Matt didn’t show any sign of looking at anything besides his computer screen, but naturally the kid still had something to say.

“And only about a quarter century too late. Very progressive, New York,” he criticized offhandedly, still probably multitasking their conversation with two email inboxes, chatting with Freddie, coding a new ‘eye touch’ app – whatever the hell that meant – and God only knew how many other windows he had open.

John cleared his throat.

“…You ever think about it?”

That did it. Matt looked up at him and John watched the usually-too-expressive features for a clue to any sort of internal reaction to the question, but Matt was either being deliberately impassive or he was just plainly too distracted by all the shit happening on that tiny laptop screen to have really been paying John any kind of meaningful attention.

Matt flicked a curious-looking regard over him for a second or two, then suddenly noticing John had finished his toast, he reached for his own absently shoved-aside plate, and got up from his chair.

“About what?” Matt asked, settling one hand briefly on John’s shoulder while he reached over him to grab John’s plate too. “The state voting population? Sure, I have ass-loads of demographics on all fifty states. Dating all the way back to the Bush election. …The first one.”

“What?”

“The first election, not the first Bush,” Matt explained over his shoulder, before disappearing into the kitchen. “You know, just for Dubya, back to 2001.”

 _“What?”_

“And the sad part?” Matt continued animatedly, when he reappeared to start enthusiastically and noisily clearing away the rest of the breakfast stuff. “It isn’t even public opinion that’s the issue, it’s _still_ voter turnout. Did you know that at least forty percent of— ”

“You know,” John said, setting his volume at just about a third of the way to ‘maintaining public order’, and snagging his coffee cup off the table before Matt could get a hold of it and decide John was done with it before he did. “It sorta _sounds_ like English but sometimes I swear we need to get an interpreter over here.”

Matt turned to look at him, and gave a little toss of his head to flick the hair out of his eyes. That was a good sign. It meant Matt wanted to focus. John had his attention. Finally.

“I get that sometimes.”

It was also pretty damned cute. John cursed himself on the inside for smiling at that, like some mushy, indulgent old sap, before he responded. “No shit?”

It was an even better sign when Matt started to move a little slower. He put his collection of kitchenware down and took the coffee cup out of John’s hand, nudging his arm to the side so he could swing a leg over John’s lap and then sit in it, straddle-style.

“Sorry.” Matt draped an arm over each of John’s shoulders. “You were saying something? About the ‘news’?” Matt managed not to roll his eyes when he said the last bit. His tone wasn’t contrite anymore so much as it was soft, and low. An invitation.

“S’alright,” John said, before he accepted it, and the apology too; pulling Matt forward enough so that he could nibble a little at the curvaceous ridge of his lower lip.

Matt made the same little grunt-sound he always did, like he was surprised, no matter how many years John had been doing this. And that little noise still always had the same effect too, sending warmth speeding through his arteries to places John had been telling himself for years were closed for business, until Matt came along. And changed everything.

Matt responded to the little nip happily, with eager kisses and one hand wrapping warmly around the back of John’s head, while the other traveled down to take an urging grip on his bicep.

But they were getting off the subject, and it was sort of an important one.

“So,” John asked, when Matt let up for a breath. “Whatcha think? Think you might wanna?”

“Well…sure.”

And John had just enough time to think how _easy_ everything always seemed to be with Matt. …Right before the kid made a liar out of him by grinning and grinding his pelvis provocatively against John’s, saying, “as long as you have time before you have to go in. I mean, don’t I always wanna?”

Alright, so they really had gone off topic. Not that John could blame the kid. Matt had dipped his head to the side and was using his mouth to do things to the sensitive spot under the hinge of his jaw that had John getting a little distracted himself – but not enough to forget to make a mental note that maybe they oughta seriously look into that interpreter thing. Later.

“For such a super-smart multitasker type, you got a real one track mind sometimes, you know that?”

“And that’s…bad?”

John's response turned into a quiet little groan, as Matt went diligently back to what he’d been doing – this time simultaneously working on getting John’s buttons open.

Well, it definitely wasn’t _all_ bad. They could always come back to the conversation later.

**

Or so John thought.

He tried to put it out of his head until he could bring up the subject again, but it wasn’t happening, not with the entire bullpen humming _Here Comes the Bride_ as John navigated the aisles of desks littered in paper and old coffee cups.

“What the hell did _I_ do?” Charlie complained, when he got flipped off before he could even open his mouth. He’d turned up in front of John’s desk right after the third smartass in a row to stop and ask if they could be a bridesmaid.

Joe kept hanging around too, sipping lazily out of water cooler cups and starting every conversation with “So…” followed by a lingering, hopeful pause like a high school cheerleader fishing for the juicy gossip.

Then there was lunch. John looked up when his corned beef on rye hit the desk with an unceremonious _thump_.

Of course it would have to be Kowalski’s day to spring, and damned if she didn’t make John the very last one in her rounds so she could stand over him with her hands on her hips, giving him that practiced stare of hers like she could see right through him. It worked like fucking truth serum on the teenaged gangbangers, and the scumbags that got hauled in for beating up their girlfriends, but John wasn’t falling for it.

“Think you’ll do it?” she asked without pretence.

Shit. John didn’t have an answer, even if he’d wanted to give her one, and that was the worst part of the whole thing. Until she had to go and be _nice_ to him, that is. Connie sat herself on the edge of the desk, letting up with the hardboiled lady cop stuff, and just looking at him all sort of soft and concerned.

“Jesus, Kowalski…” John did his best to look surly and busy, as he reached over to rescue his coffee cup for the second time today. Connie just shook her curls knowingly.

“Look, just _ask_ him what he thinks.” Then she patted his arm, before she hauled herself off the desk and disappeared.

Like he hadn’t tried.

**

He tried again just as soon as he got in that evening, which meant he had to interrupt Matt’s usual welcome home act to do it.

“Hey. You remember this morning,” John asked huskily, when there was a little break in the action, “when we were talking about the new law?”

Matt pulled back in his arms a little and blinked at him with eyes that had already gone dark-pupiled and half-lidded.

“This morning?” Matt’s smile was soft and kind of blurred around the edges by the things John’s hands were doing, where they were starting to creep up under the hem of his shirt. “How could I forget? In fact, it sort of got me thinking…”

"Yeah?" John asked, trying not to sound too edgy for an answer to the question that had been spinning through his head all day.

This was important. John freed up one hand to gently brush Matt’s hair from his face so they could look each other in the eye.

“Mmm, yeah.” The caress made Matt’s eyes flutter shut in response for a second, but then he surprised John by turning away completely and setting off down the hall, tugging his t-shirt right off over his head as he went. Halfway there, he turned back and looked at him quizzically. “You coming?”

John had no idea where the hell this was going, but he raised an eyebrow and followed him, never the less – a few leisurely paces behind so as to admire the view.

“I was thinking…” Matt repeated, leading the way down the hall again as he started working on his jeans. “We’ve done the chairs twice now. But we haven’t done the _table_ yet.”

By the time John made it round the corner, Matt was stripped down completely and shoving all the placemats and napkins onto the floor.

“This morning got you thinking huh?”

“Mmmhmm.” Matt reached out to grab John’s belt and pull him close.

“About _this_?”

“Oh yeah,” Matt said, backing them to the table’s edge. John couldn’t hold back a short chuckle. “…What?”

Oh, nothing. When did his life turn into this? It was a surprise enough, the first time around, and that time John had sort of always known to expect it – the rings, the kids, the carpools and the casseroles, even the arguments – but when that all went south for the third and final time, he’d thought that was it for him, he really had.

Then some time when he wasn’t looking for it at all, John got sent out to some random Jersey address where everything quite literally exploded in his face, and ended up getting handed a second shot at it. With a skinny, chirpy, brainiac of a kid, with hands that never stopped moving and an attitude about _everything_.

And now Matt was perched on the edge of the table where they ate, naked as a goddamn jay-bird.

John gave himself up for lost. He shook his head and reached for the strap of his holster, ready to join him.

“Wait!” Matt said, catching a lightning quick hold of John’s wrist and drawing him up short a second, before sending him a sly little leer.

“…Leave it on.”

**

For the first little while, he was buying it.

But what John was now pretty sure was a relatively crude ruse to avoid the conversation altogether, was starting to get old. Or maybe that was just _him_ , because never once in his life had John thought he’d be complaining about something like this, but every time he tried to talk to the kid about it, they ended up having sex instead.

John started out by trying to ambush him, but it turned out Matt had little or no sense of damn shame, and no place was sacred. Not the living room, not the shower after it, and definitely not the kitchen counter.

It was nuts. His back hurt, his shoulder was really fucking pissed off with him, and speaking of nuts, John could swear he was a little tender there too.

It was going on three days of it, when Matt stopped to watch John switching the laundry over, seemingly fascinated by John’s practice of shaking everything out before he tossed it in the dryer and then trying to use fucking _physics_ to argue that dumping it all in together in a tightly packed bundle could not possibly be the reason why when Matt did it, everything came out all wrinkled as hell.

By this time, Matt must have learned to read some kind of warning in John’s tone, because all he got out was a “So listen…” before Matt cut him blithely off with some ridiculous – and filthy – comment about the vibrations during the spin cycle, and they ended up doing it pressed up against the washing machine.

There was just one more place John _hadn’t_ tried yet.

**

“Yet another reason not to read the paper,” Matt said testily when John gave it what he swore was his last shot, as they climbed into bed later that night.

So Matt _did_ know what John had been getting at. And he’d definitely been avoiding the subject.

“Please, John,” Matt was pleading, “take pity on me. Okay? I give, I can’t handle any more ‘changes of subject’. You’re right, okay, I don’t go to the gym enough, I’m clearly in shitty shape. God, you have no idea…my back is killing me. I’m pretty sure I have carpet burn in places I’d need a mirror to be sure of, and that move when you kind of put me over the arm of the couch? I mean yeah, _hot_ , but I definitely pulled something.”

Honestly, John was just as tired as Matt sounded. And at this point, all he wanted to do was get a little fucking sleep, anyway. He sighed.

“It’s okay kid, I give up. You don’t want to talk about this, don’t talk. Just do me a favour and don’t ever tell me I never tried.”

John was just getting ready to roll over and give that sleep thing a try, when Matt made an unhappy growling noise that told him that wasn’t going to be an easy one for either of them.

“ _Yes_ , okay?” Matt admitted, rolling onto his back and looking up at the ceiling like he couldn’t look John in the face and say what was coming next.

“Fine. Yes, I _thought_ about it. I used to think about it all the time. About how it’s lame that people only get married in the summer. How when I met the right girl, she’d be so unique, and _un_ -lame that we’d get married in the winter, instead. You know, somewhere with a fireplace and hot chocolate, or I don’t know, mulled wine instead of champagne. And we’d _stay_ the week too, you know, instead of the typical honeymoon, pretending like I belong on a beach somewhere. …You should see me on a beach, McClane. Transformed into The Amazing Lobster Boy within seconds. And that’s in the shade. …But the right girl wouldn’t care about all that shit, she’d be happy just going somewhere quiet. And instead of flowers everywhere, since it’s winter, there’d be candles instead. Maybe the whole thing would be candle lit, I don’t know, you know me, I don’t do well with…well, _people_ , so I always hoped whatever it was, it would be _small_. And then… then the right girl turned out to be not so much a girl, as a living breathing superhero with a cock like Seabiscuit.”

Matt risked a sneaky little sideways glance at him, and John probably gave him exactly what he was after, when he couldn’t hold back his snort.

“And then I stopped thinking about it. I did, okay. I swear. So you don’t have to worry about me thinking about what could have, should have, might have, whatever. I’m happy.”

“Sounds perfect,” John murmured quietly, when Matt finally got done babbling.

“She was,” Matt agreed soberly, rolling up on one shoulder toward him, and completely missing the point again. “But you’re better than perfect. I mean, for starters, you’re real. Plus the whole Seabiscuit thing.”

“Nah, I mean, the fireplace, the snow. The _quiet_. Sounds good. It’s not too late, you know.”

Matt gave a frustrated, huffy little sigh.

“See this? This is exactly what I’ve been trying not to…” Matt drew one long-fingered hand out from under the covers and put it on John’s chest. “McClane. It’s not about ‘too late’, or me being _born_ too late, you don’t have the market cornered on being a grown up, okay. I...it was a long time ago. I’m actually pretty smart, I know that stuff isn’t what’s _important_. Being together; eating breakfast, and driving out to the shore on your day off and making out in the drive-thru carwash, and learning to do the stupid laundry properly, and that…thing we did with the washing machine. _That’s_ important. All that other shit I just mentioned…I’m honestly, totally, _fine_ without it. I promise.”

“The funny thing about a same sex marriage law, is it means you don’t have to be ‘fine’ without it. We can do whatever you want, now. … _If_ you want to.”

“Wait,” Matt said, taking his hand back and pulling it into a little fist, in front of his mouth. “Wait, wait. Are you asking me if I want to do all that with _you_? Are you…John.” Matt dropped his hand and looked John square in the eye. “Are you asking me to MARRY you?”

“Been trying to ask you all week.” It might have come out as a bit of a grumble.

“OH, my…! You mean all those times we… All those times I thought you were trying to give me an out or something awful like that…those were _proposals_?” Matt was laughing at him now. Out of all the reactions he was prepared for, this wasn’t really one of them.

Matt rolled in closer and put a quick kiss on John’s cheek. “I know I said I like ‘unique’, but _some_ traditions have to be upheld, doncha think? I mean I’m not an expert on proposing, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say since you never asked me an actual question…I’m pretty sure those don’t count.”

Which Matt apparently took to mean he didn’t owe John any sort of answer, because he pecked him indulgently on the cheek again and bounced out of bed and right out of the room, with an offhanded “be right back.”

Matt hadn’t been gone more than a couple of minutes when John’s cell phone chirped insistently from the bedside table.

He just could not catch a break. John could swear he might never get any sort of answer out of the kid. What a time to get called in on his night off.

With the way things had been going every time he brought this up though, it might be for the best, John thought, as he sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed a hand over his face and his scalp. Maybe what he’d gotten so far _was_ his answer.

John picked up his cell and snapped it open, ready to bark “McClane” into the little handset, but it wasn’t ringing. The little screen was showing a new text message instead. From Matt.

MARRY ME?

John was still staring down at the tiny screen in half-belief, when Matt came back into the room, clutching his own phone and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“Are we being _unique_?” John asked him, as Matt came to stand in front of him.

“Probably not,” Matt conceded. “This probably falls under cheesy and lame. Still beats the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium, though.” With that, Matt put a hand on John’s thigh for balance, and then he was lowering himself carefully down on one knee. John gripped the kid’s forearm to steady him, and tried to hold back the smirk. He felt giddy all of a sudden, kinda…wild and stupid inside. He felt _young_.

This time it was real. John was getting his answer. Or to stick to the facts, what he was getting, was a question.

“What do you say, McClane? Do you want to give up this very risqué living in sin thing you got going, and start slipping it to a cheesy, lame-ass _married_ man every night for the rest of your life, instead?”

John looked at Matt’s face turned up toward him – the cagey, guarded look of the last couple days wiped away by the open, expressive gaze he knew so well. Now he had somebody waiting for _him_ to give them an answer. He was usually pretty slow at texting, but handily, his reply was pretty short.

I DO.

The ‘engagement rings’ Matt produced out of the pocket of his flannel sweatpants were most certainly crafted in a bit of a hurry, and Matt’s workshop down the hall probably wasn’t much of a jewellery studio. They were too uncomfortable to wear for long, even if the somewhat ironic rainbow effect of the twisted multi-coloured circuit wiring would have probably given Kowalski a laugh. But John figured he could find a spot for his in his wallet, along with the yellowed old photo of Jack and Lucy sitting on Santa’s knee.

That would have to come later though, because this was Matthew, and a moment of actual quiet never stood a chance for long.

“…My perfect girl was also going to wear white fur, instead of a big poufy dress – well, I mean, faux, of course – but I don’t know, that look might be a bit too pimped out for you. Oh, hey, but seriously,” Matt was saying. “Do you think you could wear your dress blues? That’d be hot. Or maybe you shouldn’t, I won’t be able to keep my hands off you long enough to get through the vows…”

“Hot, huh? Hotter than my holster?”

“Ooh tough call,” Matt laughed. “You know, maybe there’s something to be said for some of this tradition stuff…” One of his hands had made its way back to John’s thigh and was slowly sliding upward. “This down on bended knee thing is actually pretty convenient positioning…”

Maybe they could handle one last change of subject after all.

  
 _FIN_


End file.
